


My Shattered Soul

by MissMaisie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 01:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20537972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMaisie/pseuds/MissMaisie
Summary: Hermione did the one thing no one else would do: ask for help.  A slow burn HG/SS story set during the sixth and seventh books.  Some slight AU.





	My Shattered Soul

**Author's Note:**

> Please be gentle, this is my first fiction. I appreciate all comments and thank you to all those who read this work.

Her heart was pounding in her throat. She wasn’t scared, per se. In fact, she found it hard to be scared of much after all she had been through. She realized she was nervous, not of rejection, but of what came from the rejection of this particular person: failure. If he said no, she would surely fail at her task: Keep Harry Alive.  
Mustering every scrap of courage in her body, Hermione knocked on the door. After hearing a quiet but sharp ‘enter’, she gently pushed open the door. Upon seeing her, his obsidian eyes steeled, but he continued marking his papers, slashing them with crimson ink.  
“You have 30 seconds.”  
Grateful that he was at least giving her some semblance of time instead of throwing her out of his office straight away, her words came out in a rush with no pause.  
“Iwantyoutoteachme,” she cleared her throat, opting to repeat herself, “I want you to teach me please,” she restated.  
“I heard you the first time, Ms. Granger, and if you hadn’t noticed, I have been teaching you for the past five years. I had hoped you would at least have paid attention to the identity of your instructor even if you didn’t have the capacity to absorb the information,” his voice was a slow drawl and his inflection was purposeful.  
She realized halfway through his answer that he was enjoying her torment, he was enjoying telling her ‘no’.  
“But sir--”  
“You may leave my office Ms. Granger, and know that you are not welcome back.”  
“Sir,” Hermione said with more force than she meant.  
His eyebrows raised at her supposed ‘cheek’ but he did not interrupt her, nor did he make a motion for her to leave. In fact, he put his grading down and folded his hands. She took the opportunity to speak before he interjected again.  
“You know my role in all of this, I am to keep Harry alive, but with the incompetence of previous Defense against the Dark Arts teachers and Slughorn for potions this year, I don’t think any of us will be ready for the upcoming,” she searched for the correct word, “trials.”  
“What makes you think I would give you my precious free time? Why not go to your head of house, or any other professor, in fact, that would be exhilarated to teach the Brightest Witch of Her Age,” he spat the last words.  
She cringed at her ‘nickname’, not that it could be called that, as it was longer than her actual name.   
“Because,” she spoke her words very carefully, “no one can know what I am doing, not even Harry and Ron, and I trust you to keep it secret from either of your…” She trailed off, not knowing how to finish her statement without greatly offending the man.  
His brows furrowed in concentration. Hermione could feel her heart in her throat; it was pounding with so much force she thought there was no way the highly observational man in front of her could see her pulse. She felt—No—She knew the fate of the entire wizarding world fell upon this decision, fell upon this man.  
“If,” he started to speak, “you can learn occlumancy, I will teach you. You have a week from tomorrow at 11pm and we will meet every night after that at the same time. If you cannot learn to occlude your thoughts, I will banish you from this classroom and you are forbidden to speak to me, even in class.”  
“But Professor, no one can master such a skill in that amount of time and—”  
“Those are my terms, Ms. Granger.”  
He went back to grading, pointedly ignoring her. Recognizing a dismissal and knowing that staying any longer would jeopardize the small chance she did have to learn from the surely professor, she turned on her heel and strode out of the classroom, closing the door without a sound.  
\--Scene Break--  
Severus sensed her leave and let out a sigh. It was risky business, taking That Girl beneath his wing and hiding it from both his masters. Masters, that is what The Girl was going to say but stopped herself from. She was worried about offending him, which was usual among the student population given his temper and his propensity to, dare he admit, overreact. He knew, however, that he had to teach The Girl. Slughorn was not going to teach her how to steel her mind or brew the necessary potions in a pinch or how to cast soundlessly and wandlessly spells and curses no one had even heard yet.   
He conceded, only to himself, that she was right in one aspect. Her job was to keep Lily’s son alive until he could reach his end at the hand of the Dark Lord. They were all pawns in Dumbledore’s and the Dark Lord’s twisted game and she had the hardest job of all: steering a directionless power to the right place at the right time. Potter was the one to finish the Dark Lord, but he could not get there on his own, not with his self-sacrificing hero complex. And so he would teach her because he could not live in a world where his entire life’s work would be wasted. He would not live in a world where he failed at his task to his lost love.  
He grimaced to himself. It was going to be an unpleasant experience, her questioning his every teaching, every action, every thought. Severus hoped in the end it would be worth it. He briefly wondered why the three of them had not undergone any additional training and in fact, the teaching at the school had been so abysmal the past five years that their class had the lowest OWL scores of the past fifty years. He himself believed the only reason the score was as high as it was was because of Draco and The Granger Girl. But he knew the reason, he barely even had to pose the question to himself. Dumbledore, though a great man, focused on the big picture, the hard choices that had to be made, and left it up to everyone else how to accomplish the goal. Genius though he was, no man or woman could think of everything.  
He called forth the class list for the sixth years. The Girl was 17. She could perform magic outside school, which meant he could force her to train during breaks, a small pleasure to balance the amount of free time he was about to give up for The Girl. That was if she could even perform occlumancy in a week. Of that, unfortunately, he had no doubt. The Granger Girl was many things, but a failure and a quitter she was not, much to his annoyance. They were alike in that way.  
He sighed, standing up and arching his back as far as it would go. He had to start preparing for the rest of the year. With his new task of watching Draco’s every move and the headmaster’s inevitable end by his own hand, Severus knew he had to be smart if he was going to add this project to his plethora of others.  
Shaking his head, he walked to the corner of his office and lifted the disillusion spell revealing a decanter full of whiskey and two glasses. After pouring himself a generous amount, he sat down. Raising his glass, he toasted the empty room.  
“To Hermione Granger, my new master.”  
\--Scene Break--  
Hermione had almost ran back to the common room and when she opened the portrait, she was greeted by two worried faces.  
“What did he say?” Harry asked.  
“He said I could apprentice under him on a trial basis only,” She answered, cringing internally at the half-truth.  
“Blimey Hermione, what did you do, Imperse him? The Greasy Git would never agree to that.”  
“Ronald Weasley!” Hermione half-shouted indignantly, “you ought to show more respect to your professors, and no, I would never cast an unforgivable.”  
“Maybe he was ordered to spy on you Harry,” Ron whispered conspiratorially.  
“That may be true,” Harry replied, a dark look crossing his face.  
“Harry, enough. Dumbledore trusts him, so we should trust him.”  
“We’re just telling you to be careful, even the brightest minds can be tricked.”  
At Ron’s words, she huffed and stalked across the common room. She settled into a heavily cushioned chair and pulled out her Transfiguration reading. If she was going to be meeting the professor past curfew every night she would have to get her work done twice as fast as usual.  
\--Scene Break--  
At 10:57 the next night, Hermione was pacing nervously outside Professor Snape’s office door. She was briefly nervous about being caught out after curfew before remembering that she was a prefect. At 10:59 she knocked on the door. It swung open revealing a dark room. Hermione nervously walked in taking slow, stilted steps. Three feet from the door there was a pain like her mind was being torn apart.  
Legillimens  
It was her eighth birthday. Decorations were hung around the living room and a cake sat on the counter. Her parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles were sitting in the living room watching her unbox her presents, most of which were books. Her eight-year-old self was glancing at the door every few minutes as if expecting someone.  
After her family left Hermione was clinging to her mother’s legs.  
“Why didn’t anyone come?” she sobbed.  
***  
She was sitting in the public library the summer after her fourth year before she went to Grimmauld Place. She tried to forget everything that had happened during the school year. It was the first time she had seen a dead body. She was flipping through the pages of a philosophy book she had picked up.  
“Plato was a fool.”  
She looked up at the voice. A dark-skinned boy in a suit was sitting across from her with a playful smile on his lips. Hermione looked around and saw more people in business dress sitting a few tables down arguing about something. She recognized some of them from her numerous trips to the library. They were from the debate club at the secondary school not too far from here.  
“I’m Travis, and if you want to read something good, read Diogenes.”  
“I think that Plato may be a bit outdated, but his thinking is what was important.”  
They argued for a half-hour when suddenly he leaned over the table and kissed her.  
“Let’s go get some coffee,” he stated, though to her it sounded more like a question.  
She looked into his bright blue eyes and taking a deep breath, gave her assent.  
***  
Hermione was running around the department of mysteries dodging curses and hexes, trying to stay with her group of friends. She heard Ron scream from somewhere and it felt like her heart sped up tenfold. She ran into a dimly lit room with hundreds of time turners sitting on the tables.   
She heard chuckling from behind her and whipped around. Her eyes met a Death Eater’s mask. Before she could draw her wand he sent a bright purple jet of light towards her and—  
Hermione gained her bearings and slammed the other consciousness out of her mind. She lay panting on the floor of the now lit office. She was staring straight into the eyes of her most feared professor. He raised one thick eyebrow.  
“Pathetic.”

Thank you all!  
Love,  
Miss Maisie


End file.
